Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

She had been born a blank. Her parents were blanks. All her relatives were blanks, though many were addicts, and she had a cousin who identified as an anarchist, but otherwise Josie’s people were blanks. They were from nowhere. To be American is to be blank, and a true American is truly blank. Thus, all in all, Josie was a truly great American.

The weasels always won because love and goodness was an ice-cream cone and treachery was a tank.

She had been comfortable, and comfort is the death of the soul, which is by nature searching, insistent, unsatisfied.

This dissatisfaction drives the soul to leave, to get lost, to be lost, to struggle and adapt. And adaptation is growth, and growth is life. A human’s choice is either to see new things, mountains, waterfalls, deadly storms and seas and volcanoes, or to see the same man-made things endlessly reconfigured.

Only a God made in our image could go for that level of animal kitsch.